Personally I think the bigotry argument (however tempting to use) should probably be dumped . It just winds people up and to call a Rabbi etc or a 90 yrs old woman bigots becuase they oppose SSM or can’t get their head around it yet isn’t going to go down very well. Go ahead call Bone, Tebbit and the likes bigots (they are and are as tough as old boots) but for heavens sake the person who released that initial draft was an idiot and it wasn’t very diplomatic to have called everyone bigots. I think Clegg ‘s former advisor should probably give it a rest.

I love the line helped draw up the coalition’s proposals for equal marriage. How many lib dem man hours did that take?

I suppose denying an ethnic group their full rights isn’t bigotry either. How on earth can any rational, logical person say that voting against equal marriage isn’t bigotry when they claim that marriage is solely for one hetero man and woman and gays must be excluded. Now if the shoe were on the other foot, I can’t for the life of me believe that if heteros were denied marriage and reserved only for gay couples, they wouldn’t call that discrimination?

“I have no doubt that the opponents of same-sex marriages will be seen, in fairly short historical order, in the same light as those who opposed mixed-race marriages.”

I agree. There is no valid reason to deny same sex couples marriage. All there is is lies, misinformation and a reliance on tradition and ‘biblical values’, but only the ones that suit their own prejudices.

The bible has been used in the past to justify racism and opposition to interracial marriage, so the comparison is very apt.

As to whether the term would be apt or not I think that depends on how the term is defined.

I think it’s a word where “if the cap fits” but you’re never allowed to actually call someone it in a debate. In the case of the C of E and the Roman Catholic church I think the cap sort of fits….. unless they want to define the word differently of course.

“”Religious bigots come in many different shapes and forms — depending on whose divine authority they presume to possess — but a common ideology that binds them across the world is stupidity.”
(Amish Raj Mulmi, The Kathmandu Post)